Grace and a Fallen Angel
by asheniel
Summary: Um...here's a very obscure, introspective, and thought-provoking fic about Todd. It's angsty but not depressing. There's a whole lot of symbolism and hidden crap, too...like I said, it's thought-provoking! There's no other way to describe it!


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A/N – Um…all I can say is, this is one queer story. I wrote it while half alive on a seven hour car ride from my cousin's house, so maybe that's the reason. Or maybe I overdosed on turkey on thanksgiving…who really knows? Anyway, like I said, this is the most obscure thing I've ever written in my entire life. There's a massive shitload of hidden crap and symbolism in here somewhere, not to mention utter confusion…Soooooo yeah. You'll see what I mean after you read this. Oh, thanks to Lotus Blossom for reading this for me at two in the morning and telling me that it made absolutely NO fucking sense…It helped! And for informing me that people don't just fall over and die…lol, j/k, I love you! To show my appreciation I'm dedicating the whole child abuse section to you since it was your idea…lol. 

So, back to the story…I'll also give a summary at the end for all those very bewildered people. 

"Grace and a Fallen Angel"

By NHSpartanGal14

He didn't look anything like an angel.

Frail bones, emaciated face, and spindly fingers masked the wings he wore on a stooped back. God's wings…an angel's wings…but they were torn and broken now, scorching under a blistering sun, dragging along behind him through years of mud and dust and debris. They weighed him down, weighed him down with their sheer vulnerability and whiteness, with their immaculate frost and snow. 

He was tired and he was carrying a martyr's world on his back. Bleeding feet dragged an aching body through torrential rainstorms and infinite deserts and fathomless oceans; pale green eyes continually scanned a perpetual horizon, searching for a destination that he'd never quite reach.

If only his wings weren't so heavy. If only he could shed them like he could shed his blood-stained clothing. If only they weren't so torn…

He would fly.

He would fly over vicious snowstorms and barren deserts and murky waters…he'd be born again, brought from hell and reincarnated into the angel that he was always meant to be. Always free, always pure, always there. He'd swoop down and rescue those like him, those that were shivering and scared and weak, those that wore broken wings. He'd save them and he'd be beautiful and happy like he'd always wanted to be. He'd be God's advocate, after all. Heaven's messenger. 

It was too bad his wings were broken.

It was too bad no one wanted to help him, to mend his wounds, to give him water to drink. It was too bad no one was willing to sit down and heal his wings, or remove them from his back, or even share his burden.

It was too bad no one gave a fuck of what happened to him or where he was going or who he was…

After all, harsh realism had granted him a thin frame and fragile muscles, a meek voice and little confidence. How was anyone supposed to see an angel through all that? 

To them, he was just a scrawny little kid that was fun to beat around when they had nothing better to do. Too small in physicality, yet too large in heart to be one of them. He was a loner, an outcast, a burr to society. The street boys that he attempted to associate with merely used him as a punching bag, while the upper class simply turned their noses. 

He knew he was alone, but he'd grown too used to it to care. They didn't understand him and they never would. They didn't know his past or his personality or his secrets. They didn't know the friends he'd lost or the tears he'd cried or the love he'd bestowed. They didn't know anything.

All they knew was what they saw with their eyes: gaunt bones and sunken cheeks and pale eyes that always seemed to gaze into the intangibility of the past. They laughed openly at his ludicrous comments about abstract worlds of far off dimensions, dimensions where people shook the earth with a force of the mind, where people reacted faster than the blink of an eye, where people were deemed immovable. They thought he was delusional or high or wasted or all three.

They laughed at him because he was so blind, so immune to the physical existence that surrounded him.

But they were the blind ones and he knew it, and for this he felt sorry for them. They thought they were smart because they sold sugar that wasn't sweet and beat people for money and raped girls and robbed stores and blasphemed the world and it's Creator. But they weren't smart and they didn't know. They didn't know shit about the world. 

After all, physicality was a mere obstacle of a deceptive planet. They didn't know beauty and they never would. It was for this that he pitied them. They didn't see the splendor of love or death or sickness or health. They didn't understand peace yet they hated war. They'd never heard of angels.

They were robots to a mechanical world and he refused to be a part of it. He was alone, he knew. The only people that had ever understood him were gone now and he had no one. Only dank alleys and cold stone and powdered insanity.

~ * ~ * ~

Her hair was fair, heavily bleached by a sweltering sun, and her skin was freckled and brown and rough to the touch. Her lips were thin and laughed too much, while her heart was crumbling and laughed too little. She was brimming with emotion, yet she felt nothing.

She called herself Grace, but no one ever believed that was really her name. Nor did anyone ever believe her when she said that she was God's cousin, or that she'd walked with angels before. No one ever believed her when she said that heaven lay just down the street and a couple blocks down. No one ever believed her when she said that the man she called Father often came into her room at night with lusty intentions, intentions to explore places that he and she both knew that he had absolutely no right to.

When her insides started burning and the monthly bleeding ceased to exist, no one believed her when she said that the man that had helped to conceive her had impregnated her as well. 

No one ever believed her about anything.

They thought she was sick, deranged, bitter, insane. Everything – and anything – but right. 

The night that she gave birth to a premature baby boy was the first and last time that she ever laid eyes on his sweetly innocent face. He was gone after that. The next day, when she asked them if she could see him, they simply shook their heads silently and walked away. 

She never even got an explanation.

Every day afterwards, she prayed for an angel to save her child and herself. Every day, she prayed for release from the hell she was living, release from the demons that encircled her. Every day, she prayed for strong wings and rustling feathers and a silken embrace to whisk her away into the clouds and never send her back down…

She prayed for a heart of Grace. 

She prayed for an angel.

~ * ~ * ~

They met for the first time in a field near her home. Towering rows of rustling stalks and crackling leaves enveloped their frail bodies and flowing tears.

He was cold and he was wishing that he could stop feeling.

She was warm and she was wishing that she could start feeling. 

Somehow they found one another within ink-stained air. Somehow their tears ceased when they saw the others', and somehow, soft smiles shone through salty cheeks. She asked him where he came from, and he told her he'd escaped from hell. He asked her if she lived around here, and she told him to ask her again next year and maybe she'd be able to say no.

Somehow, they found the smiles that they so desperately sought in a cruel world and it didn't seem so cruel anymore.

One day, lying on their backs within the protecting embrace of dry brown cornstalks and splintered air, he asked her why she hated the country so much. It was heaven compared to where he'd come from.

"Here," he whispered, his quiet voice greedily swallowed by a murmuring wind, "there's still hope for us." And he smiled sadly at her through water jaded eyes, eyes that reflected an amoral world inside their infinite depths. 

"Funny, that's what everyone thinks at first," she answered back bitterly. "Until they open their eyes."

~ * ~ * ~

Several nights later, he woke to bleeding hearts and venomous fangs. Perspiration clung to thin shoulders as he wept through dry eyes, wept for the futile struggle against the leering demons that resided in his skin.

Faces ravaged his vision: familiar faces, faces of family and friends and foes. They danced tauntingly through a frantic mind, scorning him, laughing at him, mocking him with the memories that they so carelessly evoked. Dark hair and dark eyes and white hair and icy eyes and blonde hair and brown eyes and blue skin and red hair and red glasses and auburn hair and mocha skin and honey eyes and – 

"Please don't send me back to hell," he whispered through trembling lips. "Not to hell…Please don't send me back to hell…It's so cold…It's too dark and it'll be cold…Please…Don't send me back to hell…"

But the past that he'd stored in the back of a terrified mind was playing for him, playing right before his very eyes, playing and playing and playing like some sort of home video from hell.

__

So many impassive figures, so many faceless people surrounding them, surrounding him, surrounding a tightening world. So many people reaching forward with menacing weapons and impersonal words, so many people gathering around, closer and closer, all the while speaking empty syllables to calm their fears. And then – and then – so much blood. So much vile, dripping blood everywhere he turned…So many people screaming, so many people that he knew and so many people that he loved, all screaming in pain and fear and hatred as they fell. He wanted to help them so badly, to pull them to their feet and wipe away the intruding red liquid that flowed so peacefully from stilled veins. So desperately did he want to open his wings and shield them from the flames and shouting and soaring bullets…So desperately did he want to stop screaming himself.

He opened his wings to find that they were broken.

When he looked up, he was standing outside, enveloped by cold night air.

A gaunt figure appeared in front of him, impassive face curtained in shadow and warm feet resting upon smooth green rocks. He was standing silently on the edge of a sharp crag that jutted out over a whispering quarry, completely still.

He opened his mouth to shout, to warn the other boy that the cliff was steep and that if he fell, no one would be able to save him. A bottomless sea of liquid crystal hummed melodiously below, inticingly beckoning to the young boy, teasing him to jump. 

He opened his mouth to scream, but no sound came out. The boy on the rocks stood silently, contemplating the water and it's murky depths. He was oblivious to the world closing in on him, concentrating only on himself and the plunge that awaited. 

He was suddenly struck with a needle of recognition. The boy…did he know him from somewhere? He looked so familiar….So familiar, yet so alien. 

He strained his eyes into the inky blackness, vainly attempting to unravel the other boy. The thin legs, the long hair, the apathetic face…why did they seem so familiar?

Then he realized. It was himself. He was watching himself on the rocks.

He looked down numbly in a futile attempt to prove himself wrong, hoping to see dried grass or bare earth. Not cold stone. Anything but cold stone.

But it was there in front of him, and at that point he realized what he was about to do. To himself. 

A hostile white wind whistled through his shaggy hair, filling his ears with a chilling numbness as he gazed stupidly at the murmuring green water below. Bottomless water. Hellish, bottomless water. It would swallow him down in one satisfied gulp and leave nothing behind; no remnants of himself or his life or even his very presence. He would disappear into complete oblivion.

"Hell's too cold for me," he said loudly, suddenly. He took a step forward, moving so close to the edge of the cliff that bare toes hung over unweighted air. "Hell's too damn…too damn cold for me. Hell's too damn cold for me." He shook his head, trying to push away the unwelcome apprehension that was slowly seeping into his mind. "Hell's too damn cold….too damn cold!" 

He was trembling now and he cursed himself for this violating fear. "Hell's so fucking cold! Hell…why's it gotta be so fucking cold? Fucking cold! Fucking hell!" Oceanous tears flowed down pinched cheeks, intermingling with cold sweat. He turned a pleading face heavenwards, eyes closed and lips quivering. "God…" He whispered, his body completely encircled by terror. "God…please don't let this hurt too much…"

Taking a deep breath, he jumped.

As the world rushed past him, he vaguely thought he heard Grace's sweet song in his ear. But then…it couldn't be. He was already fallen, he was too lost now. Even Grace wouldn't be able to save him. 

His thoughts were brutally ripped away by a vicious encounter with reality as demons swallowed him into their greedy throats. The faces that fogged his vision ceased to exist, and so did he.

~ * ~ * ~

When he opened his eyes, her sweet face hovered closely above his, relaxed into a beautiful smile. Her faded hair hung damply upon her shoulders, and her soaking body was dripping with liquid diamonds. He slowly reached out to catch one, to _rescue_ one as it fell from a saint's eyelash. It landed silently upon a gentle hand and immediately crept into the deepened cracks within his skin, crept from the open air that ate away at its very existence.

When he looked up at Grace, she was smiling. 

"You didn't have to go to hell…not without me," she whispered softly into the silence, small hands reaching out to stroke his wet hair. "Hell's for sinners and you're just a fallen angel with broken wings."

He looked at her for a moment, then shook his head weakly, trying to clear away the gray fog that obscured his vision. 

"Fallen angel…not…me…" He muttered dimly. "Why'd…why'd you go to hell…just…just to save me?"

She laughed gaily at this: a merry laugh that distinctly sounded of tinkling silver and rustling feathers and cooing doves all rolled into one. "Because I'm Grace…and I've come to mend your wings," she breathed, and he was the first person to ever believe her.

~ * ~ * ~

He left shortly afterwards, torn because he yearned to stay but unable to stop his insistent feet from moving in the opposite direction.

He returned to rotting alleys and deceptive snowflakes and mocking eyes, and for long days afterwards he wished he could die. Hell was as cold as it had ever been and he didn't know why he'd come so willingly. Demons surrounded him at night, taunting him, scorning him, sinking their poisoned black fangs into innocent flesh. They smiled sinister smiles, asking him if country girls blew as hard as the girls did here, if their pussies really were as wet as people said they were. Then they laughed and laughed and laughed because of his downcast eyes and blushing cheeks and obvious stupidity.

But he wasn't stupid and he did know what they were talking about, and he wanted to kill them for it. Talking like they owned the whole fucking world and all the people in it, when in reality they didn't own or even know jack shit. He wanted to kill them and he knew he could, but something inside of him held him back. 

Every time rage overtook him and red blurred his vision, he'd remember Grace's sweet words and delicate breath, and he'd decide that it wasn't worth it.

"You didn't have to go to hell…not without me," she'd whispered in his ear lifetimes ago. "Hell's for sinners and you're just a fallen angel with broken wings."

__

Hell's for sinners… you're just a fallen angel…and I've come to mend your wings…

He didn't want to forget her, and somehow he knew that if he killed them, he'd forget her and everything else that was keeping him alive each day. She wanted him to live, even though it was torture, even though it was hell. She wanted him to live, even though the world was afire and he was standing in the midst of it, unable to escape the smothering smoke and impenetrable darkness.

She wanted him to live…because someday she'd be back to mend his broken wings and then he'd be able to fly. She'd be back…someday…and he'd be able to fly…

God, he loved her and trusted her and lived for her, after all, she was his Grace and he was her angel. When they were together the world was an inch tall and evil was lost and they were standing at Hell's fiery gates, unafraid because they knew the other was right beside them.

God, he loved her so much…but why was he so scared, then? Why was he cowering, broken bones and naked flesh, against leering rocks and stabbing ice? Why was he crouched at the borders of Hell, crying and begging for sweet release?

His heart was dripping blood and tears and weeping faces haunted his vision and darkness towered before him and beside him and behind him, and each day he crept, closer and closer, to jagged rocks and clawing thorns. His family was screaming and falling before his very feet…he had to save them…save them from hell…

He fiercely willed his dragging feet to step back, telling his ragged heart that Grace hadn't saved him for nothing, that she was trusting him with the life that she'd rescued, that she'd be back someday to save him. Someday…

His fingers were slipping.

People were dying and his veins were bleeding.

Darkness enveloped him and all he could hear then was throbbing silence.

~ * ~ * ~

It was on a drizzly Sunday night that he saw her again for the first time in six years. Her face was noticeably thinner than it had been the last time they'd spoken, and her hair a little more limp. Her steps were sluggish and reluctant, as if she were unable to decide whether to move forward or backward anymore. She looked broken and defeated and so different, but it was her just the same and his heart leaped at the sight of her face.

Soft whimpering and raucous laughter simultaneously attracted and repulsed him to the damp black alley that lay hidden between a dingy nude bar and a filthy apartment building. With an apprehensive heart, he turned the corner to see two drunken men, their sweating bodies veiled in shadow as they roughly grabbed a young woman, laughing and touching her, pouring their sticky breath and raw desire all over her terrified body. She was crying liquid diamonds and her face was of an angel's. He saw her and her sweet virginity, virginity not of the body but of the heart, the glowing heart, _her_ glowing heart. He wanted to cry out to her and he did, millions of times, but then he realized that she could not hear him, that he was miles away from where she stood, that his words were a wind's whispering in her ear.

Emotion and adrenaline surging through burning veins, he leaped on the men that constrained her with a furious heart and merciless fists. It wasn't long before they were running, running, running, drunkenly wondering as they ran if it was God or the devil that was behind this.

Back in a curtained alley, she was gazing, frightened, into the corner where he stood, unable to decipher his thin frame through silver sheets of rain and inky air.

"Who – who's there?" She whispered, her slight voice wavering with unmasked fear as wide blue eyes darted through emptiness.

"It's – it's me," he replied softly, trembling uncontrollably as he took a hesitant step forward. Rain was falling from a vast gray sky, falling all about him, falling through him, falling in an eternal sheet of silver abyss.

She paused, squinting into empty air. "Who…where are you? I…I can't see you…"

He reached out with quivering fingertips and gently placed them on her damp cheek. "I'm right beside you," he said quietly.

The sudden silence was swallowed by hollow rain. 

Heaven's tears ran steadily down her disconcerted face, dripping slowly into empty crevices of pure skin and thin lips. She wiped them away hastily, brushing her straggly blonde hair from her eyes as she searched desperately for a being that was not there.

"Grace…it's me…" He stared at her, wishing that he could make her see. God, if only she could see…

Silence dragged on as comprehension slowly dawned on her haggard face and she started to realize.

"My God…you're…Oh my God, my angel." She was trembling, delicate limbs quivering and jerking erratically as she reached out into still air, fingers touching nothing. "My God, you're…you're _alive_…My angel…_he's alive_." A giggle escaped her lips, and she started to laugh, merry laughter that rang joyously through her tears and heaven's tears. "My…oh God, I thought you'd gone…you'd gone for good."

He smiled in reply, tasting the salty tears upon his own cheeks. He was crying, crying along with her and God and heaven and everyone and everything in this whole universe…crying because he'd _found_ her. He'd finally found her.

"Oh, God," she whispered again. "God, my angel's wings are healed…he can fly…God, he can fly….my angel's alive!" Her laughter was ringing through empty alleys and people were staring at her, but she didn't notice and neither did he because the physical world had fallen away ages ago and it was just the two of them now, just the two of them in their own surrogate time and being.

"Did…" she whispered, "did you come back to hell…for…for _me_?" A biting wind rushed upon their isolated bodies, pushing aside the fog and black and cold and rain that obscured their straining vision. She could see him now, a moon-kissed figure that stood silently on the edge of a vacuous cliff, beautifully silhouetted by a limitless golden sun. He was lovely. "Why…why'd you do it?" She asked slowly, her stumbling words echoing into still air.

He smiled at her, an angel's sweet smile. "Because Grace did it for me," he replied simply.

That was enough and she knew that he'd finally found her. He was going to take her home.

"When…when are we leaving?" She whispered, her voice trembling with anxiety.

He looked at her quivering lips and slowly reached forward to cease their fear with a loving fingertip. "Now." He whispered.

"Now?" She echoed, her trepidation wavering.

He looked at her and nodded, seeing the mixed apprehension and longing in her bright eyes. "Don't be scared," he said quietly, slowly reaching down to take her quivering hand in his own. "Don't be scared…it's beautiful, where we're going."

"I know," she whispered, her eyes shining with tears of a sun, shining as they swept across the vast, desolate land. The land that stood below her feet. "It's just….oh, God…it's just…._now_? It…It seems so soon…" 

He smiled patiently. "He's waiting for you."

Her eyes lightened and she looked up, hope glimmering on a tear streaked face. "He…my…son?" She whispered.

He nodded silently.

"Oh, oh my God," she said softly. "Oh my God…."

"He can't wait to see you," he told her. "He's been watching you for seven years now…he misses you, Grace."

She nodded, tears flowing once again. "Tell him….I….I miss him too…" She paused, taking in the breathtaking beauty that surrounded her, the echoing valley below and the never-ending sky above. "Tell him I'm sorry for what happened."

"You'll be seeing him very soon," he replied gently. "You can tell him yourself…and don't be sorry. He loves you."

"I….I know…." She whispered. "It's just…it's just…you won't let go of my hand, will you?"

He smiled in reply and shook his head. Eternal seconds passed between them; oceans and trees and time and lands and mountains and galaxies and stars rushed all about them, enveloping them in their worldly embrace. He closed his eyes, imagining the peace…the bliss…the people that he'd lost to hell years ago. They were waiting. For him. Waiting in a paradise unknown to the mortal flesh. Waiting for him to come home.

"It's time," he said softly, gently squeezing her small hand. "Grace…"

She looked up at him through wide blue eyes, frightened but still trusting him with everything inside her and everything that surrounded her. She nodded.

As the powerful whirlwind tightened about them, they jumped. Forever.

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END OF STORY

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A/N – Are you confused right now? Did you just say, 'what the hell just happened?!' Well, don't worry. When I read this over I was asking myself what the hell have I just spent over seven hours on. 

Here's a little, very little explanation of the ending of the story: They did NOT commit suicide. NOOOO! Todd was already dead. He killed himself about three pages ago. That is why she couldn't touch or see him. He was taking her to heaven!

Well there's my little explanation. Sorry so short, but I'm tired! It's one-thirty in the morning! If you're still confused, which I'm guessing you are because that wasn't much of an explanation, than email me at QT3547@aol.com with your question and I'll answer. I know the whole story was incredibly obscure and it was hard to figure out reality from imagination, but it's supposed to be that way. 

Meanwhile, review. Constructive criticism is always welcome, but don't forget that it's SUPPOSED to be introspective and confusing. So PLEASE don't waste your time ranting and raving about what a cracked up little girl I am. Email me or tell me what I'm doing wrong. I would appreciate that more than a flame.


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